


Faithless

by Measured



Category: Loveless, Neon Genesis Evangelion
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Angst, Bittersweet, F/F, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-10
Updated: 2010-02-10
Packaged: 2017-11-08 11:48:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/442890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Measured/pseuds/Measured
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Do you know what we are? Our name? We're Faithless."</p><p>Faithless. Without faith, without belief. The unbelieving ones. His status as a variable Sacrifice had never given him any name but Zero. And a name like Zero was like no name at all, like being eaten away and having the name stolen.</p><p>He gripped Kaworu's hand in his like he was falling and Kaworu was his only hope.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Faithless

**Author's Note:**

> \- Crossover: Evangelion/Loveless; Shinji/Kaworu: Loveless fusion, where Shinji is a Fighter, Kaworu his Sacrifice - "the farther I fall I'm beside you/as lost as I get I will find you/the deeper the wound I'm inside you"

Shinji shut himself away. After the last attack, there was little left of the house, but the metallic tunnels below were no more welcome. His father had discarded him, deeming him useless in the end. Whenever he came back, it was the same cold stare. He was looking for another prototype, and Shinji's careless loss of not one, but two fighters, both which had failed to properly meld had been the last straw in their relationship. Asuka's death had been greeted with only the disappointment of a scientist whose work has been set back. In the end, her life, and even Rei's had meant nothing more than what they could achieve. He did not mourn for them, their lives and their own intricacies, but only the data.

Of course, this itself came and left in fragments. He saw red hair, like fire, and cold eyes staring back at him. They melded and became one person, a banshee howling at his conscience. Some days were more lucid than others.

Shinji curled up into a ball, day after day the sky came in through cracks in the windows. Moisture and rain leaked in, and he fell in and out of sleep, like a trance. Occasionally, he drank. For three weeks he did not leave the house. Things were brought, enough water and food to last. He only drank when his mouth was so dry that his tongue felt sandpapery and rough. He did not eat. The hunger pangs, when he actually felt them, were welcome comfort.

What drew him outside was not the constant betrayal of blue sky above him, but the strains of a song. A sirens song that lured him, sleepless and stumbling to the beach. The sand was damp and clotted together. The seas were all polluted, evaporating into nothingness with only salt and ruin left. He passed a rotting corpse of some beached fish. The air was filled with gulls, and the cries of gulls as the waves washed up.

He saw a boy at the distance, and head the song get louder every step he took closer. Shinji's mind had been slowed ever since the deaths had occurred. Part of him thought of running, and yet the other thought only of staying in this entranced state.

"I'm Kaworu. I've been waiting for you, Shinji-kun."

Still, Shinji was guarded. He came nearer, and Shinji focused in on all the details. Sandy hair that curled at the back of his neck, with wide red eyes that resembled Rei's so much a pain came to his chest.

"....You look like Rei," Shinji said. It was the only thing that didn't make him dart away, that name which he only knew just barely. That face which itself, was stolen from him so often.

"I knew your sister. We were friends, or something like it," the boy said. He smiled, though the expression wasn't quite right, like someone not quite sure of a new language. The mention of Rei broke away what little resolve he had to

"Let's make a memory," Shinji said suddenly. He felt lighter than he had in a while. It was not quite cheerful, but it was beyond the catatonia he'd spent the last weeks of his life in.

Kaworu tilted his head, at both suggestive, and a tad whimsical. "What kind of memory?"

"One to last and never disappear."

In a world like this, there wasn't exactly photobooths or fairs to go to. Instead, they walked down the beach. Kaworu found a shell, eroded by the last chemical attack to resemble latticework. They found a picnic table which by some miracle hadn't entirely been destroyed. Kaworu had a store of rations to share, and a bit of filtered water. It was tasteless, bland food, but this was the first time he'd been able to eat in weeks. During that time, he had turned to skin and bones, a walking skeleton waiting to join with the rest of the dead.

Kaworu leaned over the table. His knees on the seat, his elbows propping him up. He stroked Shinji's face, and Shinji drew back.

"I love you, Shinji-kun," he said.

He lifted Shinji's chin, and their lips met in a kiss. It was soft, and not too demanding. Shinji couldn't remember the last time he'd been loved. His mother might have, but he couldn't remember her, though Rei was said to be very like her. Asuka had only said how much she hated him and couldn't wait for someone better. A Sacrifice like him was worthless, less than worthless. Rei had been so silent, that he never was quite sure if she cared or not. And his father....he had been the same as Rei and Asuka, and perhaps worse for he had been the one to take his mother's life.

Shinji pulled back and slapped Kaworu across the face. Sharp. He felt his lungs seem to compress as breath came in sharp gasps.

"Don't joke about such things you— you–!"

"I love you, Shinji-kun," he repeated again. It was softer, and even with the forming bruise on his face.

"You're lying," Shinji said, his voice taking a pleading edge. "You're _lying_!"

He rose his hand to strike again, but Kaworu caught his hand before it met flesh and brought it to his lips.

"I've come to be your Fighter."

He leaned closer. "I was _made_ to be your Fighter," Kaworu said. He traced along the hairs on Shinji's arms.

"You're lying...My father would never do that! I've been thrown out of the program— Asuka, Rei, they're both dead and it's my fault–" Sobs welled up in Shinji's throat. He balled his fists and put them to his eyes until there was flickering sparks before his eyes. He felt Kaworu's arm come around him, and he did not shrug off the contact.

"Your father?" Kaworu said, faintly amused by the suggestion. "Your father never made me. I was made by another, just for you, Shinji-kun..."

Shinji's lower lip trembled. He wanted to push this stranger away, and yet he wanted this to be true so badly. Rei and Asuka had never been his, nor meant for him. The connection had never formed, never bonded and when it had broke there was always the thought that if someone else had been chose, this would not have happened.

"I'm yours, Shinji-kun," Kaworu said. "All yours."

Shinji didn't trust himself to say anything. It wasn't just his lower lip that was trembling now, but his whole body.

"Do you know what we are? Our name? We're Faithless."

Faithless. Without faith, without belief. The unbelieving ones. His status as a variable Sacrifice had never given him any name but Zero. And a name like Zero was like no name at all, like being eaten away and having the name stolen.

He gripped Kaworu's hand in his like he was falling and Kaworu was his only hope.

They walked along the beach, and Shinji did not let go of Kaworu's hand. Before they had gone half a mile, Kaworu looked up, sudden, as a wave of energy from an oncoming attacker. It did not have the feel of metal, but of skin. From beyond the dunes walked two ghosts. Shinji blinked again and again, but they did not disappear as hallucinations were wont to do.

Before him stood Asuka and Rei. Kaworu stood in front of him, his hand outstretched to the air in a protective gesture.

"We've been dispatched to destroy you," Rei said in her soft, emotionless voice. Her face betrayed no feeling either.

"It sure didn't take you long to defect to SEELE. Then again, you always were _useless_ ," Asuka said.

"You _died_ ," Shinji said. "I saw you–"

"Faking a death isn't too hard with someone as fucked up as you are," Asuka said. "It was pathetic, really. Watching you cry over us and how it was _all your fault._ "

She laughed in derision and tossed her red hair. He looked to Rei for explanation, for he knew that Asuka would only offer cruelty.

"You failed Gendo-san," she said. "You showed mercy and spared the one you were sent to kill."

"But, you're my sister," Shinji said.

"We were never related that way," Rei said. She looked down for a moment, as if some well of feeling had come over her after all. When she looked back up, the mask had reformed, and again she showed nothing.

Shinji opened his mouth to say something, but only a strangled sound came out. He was trembling again. Everything within him was willing himself to wake up from this, this whatever it was. It couldn't be real, and yet no matter how many times he willed the hallucination away, they still stood before him. Real, and very alive.

"Enough talk. Let's see how long before I trounce you and that SEELE prototype," Asuka said.

"We are Heartless," they said in unison.

A kiss to the corner of Rei's mouth, a gripped hand that seems more a symptom of a fight than anything nearing intimacy. Kaworu reacted in kind, his arms around Shinji like a clinging plant vine, a kiss to his cheek, his mouth, his forehead. When he broke away, the sensation still lingered, warm and bright, flickering.

"Wind burst. Break," Asuka said. Wind shears cut at them, and Shinji hid behind his arms to weather the storm. Pain hit him, as little stinging nettles, little knife scrapes of the attack hit him. The first gash appeared on his arm, followed by a scrape across his cheek. Kaworu lifted his bloodied arm and licked it, then his cheek. When he looked back at the smug Asuka, his expression was fierce.

"Turn, mirror," he said. The wind changed from north to south, and increased in force. Rei did not respond as the waves hit her. She always had taken pain extraordinarily well, far well than Shinji had managed.

"Cold. Winter. Snow," Kaworu said. The air turned cold and biting, swirling about them in a circular motion. Rei took it, snow settling into her hair, her expression never changing, as if she were made of metal.

"Fire. Hot, burn," Asuka said. She lifted her arm, even then a defiant, arrogant gesture and wispy flames came up. Soon they melted the snow, and water flowed above them. Kaworu smirked at this.

"Drown," he said.

The water rose with an alarming rate. It was already too late by the time that Asuka realized that she had made a grave misstep. The nigh endless supply of ocean, along with what she had turned made the beach disappear beneath them. Rei stood still as the water came up. It rose past her leg, the slender hips and thighs and up her curvaceous body. She didn't make an effort, as if she accepted the drowning that came to her.

"Get moving, doll," Asuka spat out.

Rei turned to her, contemptuous, emotion broken through at last. "I am not a doll."

"Prove it, then and stop acting like one!"

Kaworu's expression darkened. He lifted his arm, his hand curved like a claw. His voice was very low as he said the last words.

"Wave. Drown."

Asuka and Rei's faces turned to the blue wave that was coming their way. Distracted, stunned, and for a moment, frozen. In that space of time, Kaworu pulled Shinji to the rocky outcropping, up the cliffs beyond. The other pair disappeared from their view as the beach was swallowed up by violent blue water. Shinji was near catatonic. Kaworu was all but dragging him away from the last fragments of his former life. Only when the beach was a faint line of blue on the horizon did Kaworu let him rest.

"My father wanted me dead," Shinji said. He said it flatly, a dead mote to the water. Fitting, as a part of him has passed away now. The innocent part, the one that still might have believed in any of his father, no Gendo's works.

Kaworu touched him, he was always touching him. Now a kiss at his throat, now an arm about him, possessive.

"His loss," he said.

"I suppose SEELE doesn't really want me either. In the end I'll just fail their tests, too."

"I'm not on SEELE's side. I'm on your side, Shinji-kun," Kaworu said. He held Shinji's face in his grip, a gentle one and let their foreheads brush in a intimate gesture.

"I'll kill whoever you hate."

Shinji let him, and let himself lean into Kaworu. Kaworu might be lying, he most likely was, but there was no one else out there to trust.

"I'm so tired," Shinji said.

Kaworu closed his eyes a moment, listening. "They're not dead yet."

Shinji wasn't sure if he was relieved or disappointed. Hate was bursting up in him, thick and hot, the lack of belief. There was nothing but them now. But now, the pain was clogging up his brain.

"I want to rest," he said.

Kaworu took his hand. "Just a little more and we'll come to shelter. You can never go home again, Shinji-kun."

He knew this already. There was no home for him to go back to. There never had been, only a pretense of it that he had hoped to one day regain. Now that hope was dashed away, drowned deep in the place where his innocence had gone. There'd be war soon. Against Gendo, SEELE, or maybe all of humanity. There'd be more bloodshed and constant battles to simply stay alive.

He was so tired. The pain in his arm throbbed. His face was a lighter cut. Kaworu kissed it, licked it clean and nuzzled against him.

"I love you, Shinji-kun."

_I'll never leave you_

And despite himself, for a moment Shinji almost believed.


End file.
